Next-gen Snapdragon mobile chip is quad-core and 2.5GHz

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The name Snapdragon is fast becoming well-known among consumers as the chip to have inside your smartphone. Offering speeds of up to 1.5GHz at the moment, it’s certainly one of the fastest mobile chips out there.

Qualcomm doesn’t want the reputation of Snapdragon to falter, though, so the chip manufacturer has just announced an update that will have smartphone and tablet users drooling.

The next iteration of the Snapdragon processor line is codenamed Krait and uses 28nm manufacturing technology. It will be offered in single, dual, and quad-core versions with clock speeds up to 2.5GHz. If the huge increase in performance wasn’t enough for you, Qualcomm also boast a 65% reduction in power use over existing mobile ARM chips.

Performance isn’t just down to cores and clock speed, though. Smartphones are using increasingly intensive graphics in both 2D and 3D forms. So Qualcomm has also integrated a new Adreno GPU with the Snapdragon that can have up to four 3D cores. The GPU is called the Adreno 320 and boosts performance 15x over the original Adreno chip.

Overall the update offers a massive performance boost while being the first time an LTE modem has been integrated into a chip. There’s also the added benefit of WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and FM as standard, as well as support for Near Field Communication (NFC) and stereoscopic 3D features.

Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president and group president for Qualcomm, commented:

Just as the original Snapdragon revolutionized smartphones with the first 1GHz processor, these new generations of Snapdragon will revolutionize the next wave of mobile entertainment and computing. We believe we have an incredible lineup of chips and software, representing a single platform that OEMs can utilize to create new devices ranging from mass market smartphones with integrated LTE, to tablets, to next generation computing and entertainment devices.

We can expect samples of the new chips to start appearing in Q2 2011 in single and dual-core models. Quad-core Snapdragons won’t arrive until 2012.

At the moment dual-core processors are only just starting to be talked about and used for smartphones. Qualcomm is pushing the option to offer a quad-core chip with potentially less power draw than existing Snapdragon processors.

While smartphones may stick with dual-core solutions for the next couple of generations, the quad-core option is very good news for tablets. The larger screen, larger battery, and higher resolution graphics make quad-core highly desirable and likely to find their way into new tablets before too long. However, with a quad-core chip not appearing until 2012, expect the new dual-core option to be a common feature in new tablets as we approach the end of 2011.